Schools Must Shed Outdated, Industrial Model, Gaudelli Says to Obama

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William Gaudelli

Moving Forward: What are the qualities of the best teachers and how are they prepared?Part of an open letter to President Obama and Secretary Duncan

By William Gaudelli

Now
that the election is over, the question looms: how do we move forward
with respect to schools? First, we need to reimagine schools for
present and future social and economic realities; second, we need highly
qualified, professional teachers who embrace this work; and third, we
need to commit to high-quality teacher education to develop the
profession while supporting the growth of current teachers.

What types of classrooms are most appropriate for current social and economic realities? Classrooms
are still characteristic of an early industrial age that sought
uniformity, linearity, lock-step progression, and static knowledge.
While at the University of Chicago around the turn of the 20th century,
John Dewey (who later joined the Columbia University faculty, taught at
Teachers College, and became a leading intellectual and philosopher of
education) went seeking movable furniture for his and his wife Alice's
Lab School, to replace the chair/desk combinations that were often
bolted to the floor. The furniture maker indicated that if they were not
bolted down, they wouldn't be school desks. This iconic image of
students sitting in rows, listening to teacher lectures, reciting notes,
and memorizing facts is as deeply emblazoned in the national psyche as
it is counter-productive to our economic viability.

Too
little has changed with respect to how learning is understood and
engaged. Recent reforms that organize curriculum around competencies,
require student inquiry, employ online resources and social media,
build-in collaboration among students and invite creativity and
personalization go a long way towards shifting from a
national/industrial model towards a global/information mode of
education. Ramping up initiatives to support this way of learning would
do much more than rearrange the furniture of schools; it would
reorganize how we think about the work of our nation's schools in
keeping with a rapidly changing world.

What are the characteristics of a highly competent teacher for these types of learning environments? First
and foremost, she must be committed to personalized instruction that
recognizes each student's learning style and abilities. The
one-size-fits-all style of education that wasted so much human potential
in the industrial era will no longer suffice. Rather, we need to
recognize and value the unique possibility of each child if we are to
achieve national progress. Second, this teacher must herself be an
inquirer, someone alive to the possibility of learning about her field
of practice, her content area, and her community of learners.
Encouraging her students to use evidence-based approaches to learning
will reap the benefits of being a highly engaged, intellectually curious
teacher. Third, she must be able to collaborate and see the value in
this democratic practice, both as a professional with her colleagues but
also among her students. Effective cooperation is required, not
optional, in today's and tomorrow's schools.

Most
important, quality teaching needs to be measured by the performance of
students. Any discussion of teaching must consider the learners, and
that if something was not learned, it was by definition, not taught.
This has been a welcome change in educational discourse and policy
lately. But we also have to be careful that the indicators of
performance are not so narrowly conceived as to miss much that was
learned.

How do we prepare teachers for a changing educational landscape? Teaching
is bedeviled by a dual reality. On the one-hand, it is a massive
profession of some 7.2 million members in the United States that has a
high attrition rate, particularly in the most challenging schools. On
the other hand, effective teaching is a highly demanding, time-intensive
activity, both in the preparation and development of skilled educators
and in their support while in the field. High quality teacher education
needs to identify and cultivate a large pool of applicants, particularly
in high-demand fields such as mathematics, special education, TESOL,
and science, while providing candidates with an outstanding experience.

Such
teacher education should include rich, field-based experiences working
with highly innovative and committed teachers who are identified as
masters of their craft. The schools in which candidates learn to teach
need to be environments that embrace diversity, support equitable
opportunity and encourage innovation and personalization with
technological support. Higher education institutions, in partnership
with these schools and teachers, should provide intellectually
challenging course-work to support teacher candidate development as well
as those of their mentors. The latest research and scholarship
generated by HEIs should serve as the intellectual backbone of this
preparation.

We
can move forward in reshaping schools to meet the demands of the 21st
Century, identifying and supporting teaching for these reconfigured
schools and providing a firm foundation and launching point for teacher
candidates in high quality, research-based institutions of teacher
education. This is the task ahead, and it is my hope that we will rise
to the challenges.

The
views expressed in the previous article are solely those of the
speakers to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect
the views of the faculty, administration, or staff either of Teachers
College or of Columbia University.

The views expressed in the previous article are solely those of the speakers to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, or staff either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.